I recently set up my new Macbook, and I was upset to see that my Windows Media video files no longer worked. The Flip4Mac player that Microsoft endorsed after they officially killed Mac Windows Media Player doesn’t install or run on Intel Macs, but it can be easily circumvented with a little tinkering. Read on for details. All Intel Mac systems include a program called Rosetta whose sole purpose is to emulate the PowerPC for non-intel native/universal applications. If you launch a non-native application, in theory, Rosetta kicks into action and dynamically translates to application to work in near-realtime. Although Rosetta is transparent, it’s not invisible, and that’s the trick. Apple has generously built into the Finder the ability to use Rosetta at will.
Here’s the essence of this “non-hack.” First, you’ll need to proceed to flip4mac.com and download their latest release. Note that it is NOT a Universal application. It is packaged as a Disk Image (dmg) file, like most Mac applications, and contains a mpkg file, which is an installation package. Unlike most Mac bundled apps, which install with a simple drag and drop, the installer must be launched. Launching the mpkg will return a failure everytime.
Now that you’ve downloaded the file, mount the disk image and navigation to /Appications/Utilities. Find the application called “Installer,” and either right-click or Apple+click to get the context menu. Select “Get Info.” Beneath the color labels you’ll notice a checkbox that reads “Open Using Rosetta.” Check it.
Navigate back to the Flip4Mac disk image and run the installer. It will launch just fine. Install Flip4Mac. Close the installer. At this point, you should go back and change the “Installer” application so that it no longer runs using Rosetta.
Next, navigate to /Applications and choose “Quicktime.” Now repeat the Rosetta emulation procedure to this application. Quicktime runs nicely in Rosetta for the most part, although there is clearly a delay for me on launch. Since it’s so easy to toggle between emulation and native mode, it should be easy to change to Rosetta when needed.
I have had no problems using WMV files on the Macbook since employing this method. Although untested (and I should probably add unencouraged), this method likely works for other packages, plugins, and applications, but of course, use at yor own risk.
Got any other tips for maximizing and optimizing your Intel Mac? Share them in the comments!
Perhaps they’ve fixed this, but the Flip4Mac plug-in caused all my Office v.X apps to crash on launch. Was very puzzling until I found other users with the same problem. A quick uninstall the F4M plug-in returned Office’s functionality.
This was on Tiger. I don’t know if the bug applies to Office 2004 for Mac or not.
IIRC, there was a new version release last week (x.02 instead of the original x.01). Maybe it solve this crashes, you may wanna try.
>Perhaps they’ve fixed this, but the Flip4Mac plug-in caused all my Office v.X apps to crash on launch.
Try going to each Office (v.X) app preferences and disabling “Show Project Gallery on Startup”. That fixed the crash on launch bug for me.
Yeah that’s exactly how I got that problem solved too, so just go into Library/Quicktime and temporarily move your flip4mac .component files somewhere else
fire up office and disable “show project gallery on startup”
now you can put those .component files back in
note that this still doesn’t let you use the project gallery… it just prevents it from crashing office at startup
I haven’t used an Intel mac so this is going on an idea alone.
CAn you navigate to /Library/QuickTime and set the individual plugins to use rosetta?
I don’t know If Quick time will run it that way though. It would be interesting to find out. anyone got an intel mac Mini I could test it on?
Only .app files have the ability to toggle the “Run Using Rosetta” setting. That doesn’t mean it can’t be done, it just means that it’s not a simple switch in the Finder (at least, one that is immediately obvious).
Pretty useful tip, I wonder why I didn’t think of that
I’m currently trying out OSX on my Asus laptop and I’m getting more and more comfortable with idea of getting a Mac in the future. The only serious problem I’ve encountered is the lack of codecs. I’m used to installing VLC and playing everything I throw at it (except wmv of course) but on Mac it doesn’t seem to be the case. Is it that there are codecs that aren’t ported to OSX or am I doing something wrong? Forgive me my OSX-n00bishness 
VLC does little good for some kinds of .wmv and web pages that incorporate them. This is why this application is so important, especially after the demise of Windows Media Player for Mac.
MS sucks, they could do better if they’d try and fix their image. No wonder most mac users and also pc user hate ms.
A truer idiot could post no better than thou.
can’t you just use mplayer to play wmv files?
No, mplayer on the Mac hasn’t played successfully most of the WMV I threw at it. And don’t forget, the point of Flip4Mac is NOT pure playback of WMV, it is WEB PLUGIN support for WMV, via the Quicktime interface. Neither Mplayer or VLC can do that.
mplayer on the Mac hasn’t played successfully most of the WMV I threw at it.
did you try downloading additional codecs from http://www1.mplayerhq.hu/homepage/design7/codecs.html?
WEB PLUGIN support for WMV,
there is an mplayer plugin…
via the Quicktime interface.
eww… why?
Because the mplayer plugin is not as stable as Quicktime is.
VLC can’t play WM3 (aka Windows Media 9) files natively, only WM2 & 1 (among a lot of other formats). The reason it works on Linux is because it “cheats”
by using Windows’ DLL codec, and that is not an option in OS X.
Same deal with MPlayer.
[quote]VLC can’t play WM3 (aka Windows Media 9) files natively, only WM2 & 1 (among a lot of other formats). The reason it works on Linux is because it “cheats”
by using Windows’ DLL codec, and that is not an option in OS X. [/quote]
Wouldn’t that be easier, now that Mac is Intel?
i have a older copy of windows media player ive been using for ppc.
has anyone tried Camino for browsing, it’s seems faster than Safari.
I use Camino almost exclusively now. I would warn you, though: I’ve had a lot of problems with recent nightly builds, and eventually went back to 1.0. Stick with stable releases.
My only complaint about Camino is the fact that once your tabs fall off the screen, there is NO way to work with them save keyboard shortcuts. It’s weak to not be able to close the tabs without cmd+w.
yeah, I’ve only used Camino for about an hour so far. So far so good, hopefully they keep devoloping it.
I use Camino almost exclusively now.
Showstopper in Camino: opening dropdown menus from the bookmarks bar takes ages each time you load Camino. SO annoying.
Showstopper in Camino: opening dropdown menus from the bookmarks bar takes ages each time you load Camino. SO annoying.
Ok, got that fixed, thanks to the disable-favicon-in-bookmarks-bar-hack [1]. Nice!
[1] http://www.caminobrowser.org/support/hiddenprefs/
“Apple+click” is usually called (and IIRC, officially) command+click, or cmd+click for short.
I have tried the trick, but Safari still tells me that it can’t a suitable plugin for the content. I am trying CNN Pipeline. Anyone else having problems? Any ideas?
That the makers of digital media for the web stick to open standard formats instead of .WMV .MOV amd .RM,these all require proprietary media players to watch the presentations,oh sure vlc handles a lot of them,but the bottom line is they play better in their native environments.My gf just made a touching little presentation starring her grandchildren ,she used MS movie maker software,I really liked it and asked her if she would burn me a copy because I have been around .I told her to save it as an mpg or avi file so i could watch it on my BeOS box or in Linux because ?I really don’t have a windoze box any more except my laptop which has win98 SE on it,guess what there’s no options to save a move as anything besides wmv in MS movie maker,funny i can fire up my copy of the 8 yr old program Adamation personal studio(an old BeOS program thats very similar to Movie Maker),make a similar presentation, and save it as an .avi file that will play virtually anywhere and on any OS,now if iwere trying to present something to the general public i would want to do it in the format that would reach the biggest audience,With the growing popularity of OSX and Linux these days you would think they would address this,after all how many video tapes come out on BetaMax these days and how many DVD’s in the old LaserDisc format?
What format would you suggest they use? You said avi but you didn’t specify a codec. I don’t use windows too often but recently I needed to burn a DVD for someone that made the video in Windows Movie Maker. Since I have a mac I needed to get it in a usable format. Movie maker does support exporting as DV using the avi format.. IT creates a huge file but it is a way of getting it out of movie maker without loosing quality.
cilcoder posed a very good question.
Isn’t the quicktime spec an open standard? It seems that Mpeg 4 / Divx are pretty widely supported using the avi container.
the mplayer plugin is less stable than quicktime? i’ve never had the mplayer plugin crash on any system i’ve used it on… unfortunately i can’t say the same about quicktime…
Browser: Opera/8.01 (J2ME/MIDP; Opera Mini/1.2.3214; es; U; ssr)
If setting a checkbox is all it needs to run, why can’t the Mac tell if it’s PPC in the first place and launch Rosetta itself? What, it has no idea that the code is PPC and not x86?? That just doesn’t seem right.
Because it’s QUICKTIME you need to trick, and Quicktime is native. You only need it to be emulated to use the WMV decoder for Windows Media 9+ files, which may only be some of the files you use.
Er… either that or just download Windows Media Player for Mac OS X ( http://www.microsoft.com/mac/otherproducts/otherproducts.aspx?pid=w… ) while you wait for Flip4Mac’s Intel version.
Sure it sucks big time, and sure MS discontinued it, so it is not getting any better, but it’s still there.
Nope. It doesn’t play WMV9 files.
> Nope. It doesn’t play WMV9 files
Yep. It does. WMP 9 for Mac OS X has always played WMV3 inside a WMV container perfectly fine. In fact, up to the release of Flip4Mac, it was the only way to do it.
(OK, not so for AVI containers, but you can solve that with WMV3Server [1], and besides, who uses WMV3 in an AVI?)
[1] http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Bay/8128/
Edited 2006-03-10 13:20
I should probably post after I go home & try this on my Intel Mac, but it might be a good idea to make a second copy of Quicktime.app (i.e.: Quicktime-Rosetta.app) and set the rosetta flag on that. That way you’d be able to run original Intel-native version for non-wmv files.
I’m may muck around sometime and see if I can mess with the .app internals, and inject a shell script that will start one or another binary depending on the file name…
None of this would really help the browser plug-in, but maybe someone can grab the open source Safari & trick it out.